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A corpus of ‘Mughal’ glass

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

Simon Digby
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Extract

In the history of Indian art some areas are in very much better order than others. For those whose interests are concentrated in the Mughal period (sixteenth to eighteenth centuries), the study of the history of painting has been vastly advanced in the last 20 or 30 years. Every year increases the great number of paintings known to exist in public or private collections, or passing through the sale-rooms and the stocks of dealers in three continents, and almost every year there are significant discoveries and publications. In the field of Mughal architecture, perhaps, the same rapid progress is not visible. Some attractive coffee-table books figuring it have recently been published but there is a disappointing lack of analytical examination.

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Articles
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Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , February 1973 , pp. 80 - 96
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Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1973

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References

1 Dikshit, Moreshwar G.: History of Indian glass. (Pandit Bhagwanlal Indraji Endowment Lectures, 1967.) xvi, 212 pp.Google Scholar, 48 plates. Bombay: University of Bombay, 1969. Rs. 65.

2 After its publication, the sad news has reached us of the death of the author of this work, awell loved and respected member of the Archaeological Survey of India. Although the writer of this note would take issue with Dr. Dikshit on much of the contents of this pioneering study, he shares the general sentiment of regret that nothing more will come from Dr. Dikshit's pen or from his excavator's trowel.

3 Dikshit, , op. cit, 149–61Google Scholar.

4 Dikshit, 162–81.

5 Dikshit, 148.

6 See ARAS1, 1908–9, p. 82, plate XVIII.

7 Dikshit, 65–6, plate III B.

8 Dikshit, : the drawings on p. 74Google Scholar, fig. 15, make the necks too slender, giving them a Persian air, but ef. plate IV. In view of their alleged find in association with porcelain with reign-marks of Lung-ch'ing (r. 1566–72), it may be suggested that the bottles are more likely to be late sixteenth century.

9 Khan, K. A., Banbhore, second ed., Karachi, , Dept. of Archaeology, 1963. 46Google Scholar.

10 It was visited by the present writer in March 1971.

11 Connoisseur, May 1966, 18–26.

12 See Jenyns, R. Soame, Chinese art, II: the minor arts, London, 1965, 135–9Google Scholar.

13 This is the ease at Sissinghurst Castle, Kent. The collection was formed in the early years of this century by Lady Sackville and was apparently mostly acquired in the United Kingdom and western Europe. The writer is indebted to Nigel Nicolson, Esq.. who provided him with this information and permitted him to examine the pieces.

14 British Museum Quarterly, XXV, 3–4, 1962, 92–5Google Scholar, plate xxxvii.

15 cf. Dikshit, plate XLA.

16 The British Museum collection yields another splendid glass object of a form unrepresented in Dr. Dikshit's work, a dark blue āftāba with a piriform body, the gilt decoration being in a floral diaper—see Harden, D. B. and others, Masterpieces of glass, London, 1968. p. 124Google Scholar, plate 163.

17 BMQ, XXV, 3–4, 1962, p. 93 and n. 10Google Scholar.

18 See Gluek, H., Die indischen Miniaturen des Hsemzse-Romanes, Wien, 1927Google Scholar, plate 27.

19 Survey of Persian art, XII, plate 1450a: Harden, and others, op. cit., 122, plate 161Google Scholar.

20 Photographs by courtesy of the Bristol City Art Gallery, to whom I am grateful for permission to publish the piece.

Mr. Peter Hardie in a letter to the present writer adds the following details: ‘The body of the vessel is of a transparent rose-pink glass, overlaid with a thin layer of opaque white glass carved in cameo fashion with a band of ju-yi heads around the neck, with bats among formal cloud-scrolls on the body, and with lotus petals at the bottom; this white metal arises as a low neck at the top and a solid plug at the foot, on to each of which a symmetrical rolled-over cylinder of clear colourless glass has been fired’.

On the foot of the vessel is incised a dating inscription, very badly written, in Arabic letters (see plate n) which I read as follows:

This much is clear, that we have a date ‘from the death of the Messenger (Muhammad) year 1172’; but I have been unable to identify the language where as serves as an ablative postposition. Professor H. L. Shorto in conversation with me suggested that as might be misinscribed for Malay dalam ‘within’. This is possibly easier to believe than that it is miswritten for OJ, Eastern Turki den = modern Western Turkish den/dan ‘from’. In support of a Malayan attribution, it is known that in an earlier period Buddhist converts to Islam sometimes took the Hijri era to be a reckoning from the death of the Prophet like the Buddhist era from the Parinirvana. If the date on the vessel is indeed in the Hijri era it corresponds to a.d. 1758–9: if it is still a lunar reckoning, but calculated from the Prophet's death 10 years later, it would correspond to a.d. 1768–9. For a comparable eccentric Muslim era, Tipü Sultān's mawlūdī or Muhammudī sana, apparently reckoned from 13 years before the events of the Hijra, see Islamic Culture, xiv, 2, 1940, 161–4Google Scholar, and Hasan, Mohibbul, History of Tipu Sultan, second ed., Calcutta, 1971, 339–400Google Scholar.

21 Ettinghausen, R., Paintings of the sultans and emperors of India, New Delhi, Lalit Kala Academy, n.d. [c. 1961], plate 14Google Scholar.

22 I am indebted to my friend Howard Hodgkin, Esq., for a generous gift of photographs and for permission to publish.

23 See the passages quoted by Dikshit, 119, 121.

24 Pires, T., Suma Oriental, ed. and tr. Cortesao, A., II (Works issued by the Hakluyt Society, Second Series, 90), London, 1944, 269Google Scholar; Dikshit, 114, slightly misquotes. What Pires says is not that there were many Gujaratis trading in ‘golden glassware’ to Malacca and other commodities originally brought from Venice to Cairo, but that the merchants from Cairo transhipped in Gujarat for Malacca.

25 Islam, Riazul, Indo-Persian relations, Teheran, 1970, p. 73. n.3Google Scholar; Valle, P. della, Viaggi, [Pt, II, La Persia, Lettera vi], Brighton, 1843, ii, 26Google Scholar.

26 Charleston, , Connoisseur, 05 1966, 24–5Google Scholar.

27 Sotheby and Co., Catalogue of a sale, London, 17 05 1965, p. 21, No. 93Google Scholar.

28 Charleston, , Connoisseur, 05 1966, fig. 10Google Scholar.

29 Dikshit, plates XLII, XLIIIA–B.

30 cf. Survey of Persian art, XII, plate 1452.

31 Dikshit, plates XXXIII–XXXVII.

32 Dikshit, 135.

33 e.g. I.S. 3086–153—1883.

34 Dikshit, 141; IGI, III, 243.

35 Hoshiarpur in the Panjab as a centre of glass production is not mentioned by Dr. Dikshit. The vessels produced there, from the descriptions, would appear to have resembled those of the Patna manufactory, though still coarser in execution. J. Lockwood Kipling's account of the establishment of the Hoshiarpur industry in the 1850's, while emphasizing the role of an enthusiastic mid-nineteenth-century British official in establishing the industry there, in fact provides no evidence of direct borrowings from contemporary European technology rather than the importation of techniques and craftsmen from some earlier centre of production in the subcontinent (Patna ?). Kipling's description is worth quoting at length for its evidence of conditions of production and marketing, and will serve as a pièce justificative for the views expressed earlier in this paper as to the dichotomy of Indian glass production.

‘The abundance, till a recent period, of fuel on the hill sides in this district (Hoshiarpur). which is a long and narrow submontane tract, led to the manufacture of glass bangles and rings, especially at Dasuah and Hajipur. It is a curious fact, and one which testifies to the strange simplicity and narrow needs of rustic life in the Punjab, that although Churigars [Hindi— “makers of bangles”] produce glass of agreeable colour and at a cheap rate, there is no use for it but in the form of churis or bangles, small phials for attars ['itr “ otto, perfume”], and for fairs a toy consisting of a glass tube half filled with water, with a bulb at either end. But there are no bottles, vases, drinking cups, or any of the hundred forms into which, in other parts of the world, glass is wrought. General Abbott, who was Deputy Commissioner here from 1850 to 1858, interested himself in this subject and introduced glass-blowing as understood in Europe. But the entire absence of any native demand naturally caused the manufacture to die away. For the Punjab exhibition, 1881, a large quantity of small vases, sugar basins, finger bowls, flower glasses, cups and other objects were made. The colours were green, yellow, a greenish and horny -white purple, and a dim but not disagreeable amethyst tint. From a technical point of view these vessels wore very imperfect, being full of air-bubbles and knots, and they seldom stood straight. But if there is any truth in Mr. Ruskin's dictum that blown glass vessels should, so to speak, confess the conditions under which they are produced, and look as if they were rapidly formed from a molten substance hastening to hardness in the artificer's hands, then these modest vessels were, at least, right in principle. In Bengal, similar glass vessels are made, and, as there is some slight demand, the workmanship has improved…. Compared with the English cut-glass chandeliers in crystal white and brilliant colours, which are the delight of wealthy natives, the material of the churigar is dim and lustreless. But it has a distinct beauty of its own, and is capable of being made into many agreeable and useful forms’ (Kipling, J. L., ‘The industries of the Punjab’, Journal of Indian Art, 20, 1887, 38–40)Google Scholar. For a more extensive description of the techniques of the Hoshiarpur (Dasuya) industry, see Hallifax, C. J., ‘Pottery and glass manufactures of the Punjab, II’, Journal of Indian Art and Industry, v, 42, 1893, 47–9Google Scholar.

Evidence of another glass manufactory in the subcontinent producing rather rough and strongly coloured products was noted by the writer on visits to Thattha, Sind, Pakistan in March and October 1971. In the ruined Hīrā, Bazar area about 50 yards east of the sixteenth-century Dābgir Masjid, the wreckage of kilns was visible, surrounded by sherds of brightly coloured glass, often crizzled: but, apart from sherds of evidently local manufacture, pieces of European coloured bottles, in one case stamped ‘Belgique’, were lying in the vicinity. This suggests a local re-working of the metal of imported glass similar to that found by Alastair Lamb on a fourteenth-century Malayan site (‘A note on glass fragments from Pengkalan Bujang, Malaya’, Journal of Glass Studies, vii, 1965, 39)Google Scholar. Some of the glass sherds and the kiln-site may be pre-nineteenth century. The pottery and porcelain sherds found on the surface at Hīrfā Bāzār can often be assigned to the fifteenth-seventeenth centuries, a period of prosperity in Thattha which contrasts sharply with the decay and depopulation of the city by the first half of the nineteenth century.

36 Dikshit, 99, plate XXXIB. V and A, I.S. 13—1893; Cole, H. H., Fifty-one photographic illustrations taken by order of the Government of India of some selected objects shown at the third exhibition of native fine and industrial art opened at Simla by his excellency the Viceroy on the 24th September [1881], London, 1883, 23, plates XXXVIII–XLGoogle Scholar. Capt. Cole remarks, regarding these pieces: ‘The objects of glass, porcelain and metal work collected for me by the Executive Engineer at Bijapur, Bombay, are curious examples of Indian workmanship of the 16th and earlier centuries’.

37 Dikshit, 135, plate XLI.

38 Dikshit, 137, plate XLVII.

39 Harden, and others, op. cit., 134Google Scholar. plate 170: Journal of Glass Studies, VII, 1965, p. 124, fig. 19Google Scholar.

40 I.S. 14—1893: Dr. Dikshit may have been referring to a similar piece on p. 89, of which he gives the accession number F.F. 257.

41 Dikshit, plates XXV–XXVU.

42 Dikshit, plate XXVB.

43 Dikshit, plates XXIII, XXIXB, XLVII.

44 Dikshit, plate XXIXC: the name is one given by Dikshit to this class of objects, which I have been unable to confirm elsewhere.

45 For the example in glass in the British Museum, see above, p. 84, n. 15.

46 Dikshit, plate XXXA: wrongly described there as a spittoon.

47 V and A, I.S. 15—1893.

48 V and A, I.S. 13, 14—1893: H. H. Cole, op. cit., loc. cit.—the piece is illustrated on plate XXXIX.

49 Item 93 of the sale: see above, p. 87, n. 27. Plate in sale catalogue.

50 V and A, I.S. 493—1883.

51 See Coomaraswamy, A. K., Catalogue of the Indian collections in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Pt. VI, Muglml painting, Cambridge, Mass., 1930, plate XXX, No. LXXV, pp. 46–7Google Scholar.

52 BMQ, XXV, 3–4, 1962, 92–5Google Scholar.

53 Dikshit, plate XLA.

54 cf. Coomaraswaray, A. K., The arts and crafts of India and Ceylon, London, 1913, figs. 180, 181:CrossRefGoogle ScholarSirWatt, George, Indian art at Delhi, 1903, London, 1904, 474, plate 73, No. 2Google Scholar. A bidrí-w&re example with Chinese decorative motifs in the V and A, I.S. reserve collection, and an earthen-ware example crudely painted in blue and white recovered in the upper strata of the recent Purānā Qil'a excavations (of which a photograph has been conveyed to me by Mr. John Burton-Page) suggest that there may also have been Chinese blue and white porcelain vessels of this form for the Indian market, but I do not know of existing examples.

A further problem arises with regard to a spherical huqqa-base in the Corning Museum of Glass (Dikshit, plate XXXIXA–B). This is of rather coarse proportions, the thick neck with its coarse ridge in particular being somewhat far from other Indian examples. The decoration is diamond point engraved and in style does not resemble anything else in Dikshit's corpus. On either side there are designs at the centre of the field—in one case a three-masted ship with an enormous Union Jack, in the other an urn upon a plinth—both motifs being enclosed by floral and vegetable ornament. No record is mentioned of this piece having been acquired by the Corning Museum from outside the U.S.A., while the rather naive decoration (as well as the absence of such pieces in British collections) suggests that this is an American piece of the eighteenth or early nineteenth century, probably not intended for other than a local market. It is difficult to guess whether it was intended for a hubble-bubble or for some less exotic domestic purpose: and whether its shape derives from the Indian spherical huqqa-basea or could have occurred spontaneously. Dikshit identifies it as ‘amongst the articles manufactured by foreigners for the Indian market’ (p. 111). With it he associates a piece of very different quality in the Salar Jang Museum, Hyderabad, a spherical huqqa-base distinguished by a rather narrow projecting rim-foot, decorated with an elaborate European floral design figuring a large poppy and circular wreaths engraved intaglio (using both wheel and point ?), which looks like the product of a good factory, possibly in the second quarter of the nineteenth century (Dikshit, plate XIA). Unlike the Corning Museum example, the shape as well as the Indian provenance suggest that this is indeed huqqa-base exported to the Indian market.

Hallifax, C. J., writing in the last decade of the nineteenth century about the glass wares then produced in the Panjab, tantalizingly remarks ‘Huqqa bottoms are made in Kangra for about 8 annas apiece’ (Journal of Indian AH and Industry, v, 42, 1893, 49)Google Scholar. Spheroid huqqa-babscs in brass were characteristic of the sub-Himalayan Panjab at an earlier date: the fine example reproduced by Watt, op. eit., loc. cit., was evidently acquired in Nurpur, Kangra district. It is possible that the glass huqqa-b&ses manufactured at Kangra were also spheroid. In any case, on this evidence, some of the Indian-blown huqqa-bases in the corpus of ‘Mughal glass’ may have been produced as late as the 1890's.

55 Survey of Persian art, XII, plates 1442a, 1443e–f; Harden and others, op. cit., figs. 143, 148, and plate III (spherical body): figs. 139, 140 (‘campanular’ body).

56 It is curiously difficult to find representations of the characteristic form of the unglazed North Indian surāhī. The ‘soráhi’ shown among the pottery manufactures of the Panjab in Journal of Indian Art and Industry, v, 42, 1893, plate 43, No. 15Google Scholar, is less full-bodied and spherical than examples still made in the Delhi area. The surādhī, which serves to provide a supply of drinking water chilled by evaporation within the living room, is usually of a size larger than the huqqa-bases, but still small enough to tilt and pour from easity. Among larger gharās or earthen-ware water-carrying pots, a narrow-necked variety is found—I do not know with how wide a distribution—which even more closely resembles in shape the spheroid huqqaa-base with short, ridged neck: see the Saurashtran examples in Fischer, E. and Shah, H., Rural craftsmen and their work, Ahmedabad, 1970, plates 257, 260Google Scholar. Cf. also the unglazed earthenware pitchers on the lower shelves of the crockery shop on plate in of the present article.

57 Dikshit, plate XXXI—six glass examples in the Bhārat Kalā Bhavan.

58 This does not imply that the glass examples in the Bharat Kala Bhavan are themselves of very early date. The two red and yellow huqqa-hases in Air. Hodgkin's painting (plate III) are of an indeterminate and clumsy bell-shape which may represent an early stage in its evolution. We cannot say with certainty whether they are of glass.

59 Dikshit, 85. plate IXB; Salar Jang Museum, No. 121.

60 V and A, I.S. 1139—1883.

61 Dikshit, 84; V and A, I.M. 109—1923.

62 Dikshit, loc. eit.; V an d A, I.S. 90—1948.

63 Dikshit, 81, plate V.

64 Dikshit, loc. cit.

65 I.M. 11354—01354.

66 See Jenyns, Soame, op. cit., IIGoogle Scholar, plates 83 and 84.

67 See Rosenfleld, J. and others, The arts of India and Nepal: the Nasli and Alice Heernnmneck collection, Boston, 1967, 163—4, No. 224:Google Scholar cf. Soame Jenyns, op. cit., II, plate 84.

68 V and A, I.S. 1662—1882.

69 V and A, I.S. 01361.

70 Dikshit, 105–10, plates XXXIII–XXXVIII.

71 Honey, W. B., Glass: a handbook, London, 1946, 70Google Scholar.

72 e.g. V and A, Buckley Nos. 84, 85, 86; Journal of Glass Studies, ix, 1969. p. 119, No. 59Google Scholar, two bottles and a cup in the Musée de Verre, Liège.

73 For a very pretty gilt bottle in this style in the Corning Museum of Glass, see Journal of Glass Studies, V. 1963, p. 146, No. 26Google Scholar.

74 Dikshit, plate XXXVB–C. Cf. Survey of Persian art, XII, plate 1451d, for a similar ‘bottle, blue, moulded in relief, enamelled and gilt’.

75 Dikshit, 106.

76 Craig, W. D., Coins of the world, 1750–1850, Racine, Wisconsin, [1966], p. 461, No. DllGoogle Scholar.

77 Dr. Dikshit's illustrations of the coins on plate XXXVII are yet another case of a wrongly stated scale: ‘1: 1’should be amended to 12:7 for the coin in the upper illustration, and to 2:1 for that in the lower.

78 The writer wishes to express his thanks to Mr. John Irwin and Mr. Robert Skelton of the Indian Section, Victoria and Albert Museum, and to Mr. Peter Hardie of the Bristol City Art Gallery and Museum, without whose help this article could never have been written: they are not responsible for the opinions or errors in it. I am grateful to the Department of Education and Science and to the Victoria and Albert Museum for providing photographs of the pieces figuring in plates IV-VI and for permission to publish: the two rock crystal pieces are previously unpublished.